Things American

Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era

By Jeffrey Trask

Publication Year: 2012

"Things American gives us, at last, a history of the Metropolitan Museum of Art based on genuine archival materials. Moreover, it reorients our thinking about art museums in the United States, demonstrating that there were important democratic, utilitarian, and civic impulses at work behind them. The book also broadens our thinking about progressivism, reminding us how it shaped art museums and how those museum-related programs it spawned continued beyond World War I."--Steven Conn, author of Do Museums Still Need Objects?
American art museums of the Gilded Age were established as civic institutions intended to provide civilizing influences to an urban public, but the parochial worldview of their founders limited their democratic potential. Instead, critics have derided nineteenth-century museums as temples of spiritual uplift far removed from the daily experiences and concerns of common people. But in the early twentieth century, a new generation of cultural leaders revolutionized ideas about art institutions by insisting that their collections and galleries serve the general public.
Things American: Art Museums and Civic Culture in the Progressive Era tells the story of the civic reformers and arts professionals who brought museums from the realm of exclusivity into the progressive fold of libraries, schools, and settlement houses. Jeffrey Trask's history focuses on New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which stood at the center of this movement to preserve artifacts from the American past for social change and Americanization. Metropolitan trustee Robert de Forest and pioneering museum professional Henry Watson Kent influenced a wide network of fellow reformers and cultural institutions. Drawing on the teachings of John Dewey and close study of museum developments in Germany and Great Britain, they expanded audiences, changed access policies, and broadened the scope of what museums collect and display. They believed that tasteful urban and domestic environments contributed to good citizenship and recognized the economic advantages of improving American industrial production through design education. Trask follows the influence of these people and ideas through the 1920s and 1930s as the Met opened its innovative American Wing while simultaneously promoting modern industrial art.
Things American is not only the first critical history of the Metropolitan Museum. The book also places museums in the context of the cultural politics of the progressive movement--illustrating the limits of progressive ideas of democratic reform as well as the boldness of vision about cultural capital promoted by museums and other cultural institutions.
Jeffrey Trask teaches at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

Cover

Title Page

Copyright Page

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction:
Museums and Society

In the early twentieth century a new generation of museum reformers ushered
in an institutional revolution that redefined the relationship between
art, museums and industrial urban society in the United States. Determined
to overturn the image of museums as elite storehouses of art, those curators...

In 1889, the Metropolitan Museum of Art moved toward a more democratic
relationship with the people of New York City as it tried to become an accessible
educational institution. The museum doubled its size by expanding into
a new building wing, and its board of trustees both elected a new president...

Chapter Two: The De Forest Faction's Progressive Museum Agenda

In 1905, the Metropolitan Museum underwent an institutional revolution
that reverberated throughout American museums. A new generation of
trustees and museum professionalsHenry Watson Kent, Edward Robinson,
Robert de Forest, and other like-minded progressive connoisseursreplaced
the old guard of museum leaders who believed that simply providing access...

Chapter Three: The Educational Value of American Things: Balancing Usefulness and Connoisseurship

Just as Robert de Forest placed the Metropolitan Museum of Art within
broader Progressive Era social reform circles, Henry Watson Kent brought
the museum into a network of educational institutions that aligned arts and
industry. Instead of thinking about art museums as temples of spiritual uplift,
progressive connoisseurs at the Metropolitan Museum, the Newark Museum,...

Chapter Four: The Arts of Peace: World War I and Cultural Nationalism

World War I had a profound impact on the progressive museum agenda and
on the way art museums used American things to improve public taste. Robert
de Forest seized on the war as an opportunity to disseminate his notions
of cultural democracy, and he used his leadership positions at the Metropolitan
Museum, the Sage Foundation and the American Federation of Arts...

Chapter Five: The Art of Living: The American Wing and Public History

The Metropolitan Museum of Art unveiled the American Wing of period
room galleries in November 1924 with a lavish dedication ceremony, where
museum trustees, architects and curators spoke about the patriotic and educational
value of American decorative arts. "Our Museum," Robert de Forest
proudly enthused, "is sounding a patriotic note." "We are honoring our fathers...

Chapter Six: Americanism in Design: Industrial Arts and Museums

In 1925 the New Yorker called Richard Bach "the man who "sold" Art to the
United States without the United States ever knowing it." Since teaming up
with Henry Watson Kent at the Metropolitan Museum in 1918, Bach had
expanded the museum's educational outreach by building an extensive network
of industrial manufacturers and retailers. The Metropolitan Museum's...

The Metropolitan Museum entered the 1930s with a reputation for making
museums work for the people. As early as 1919, the Boston Evening Transcript
had heralded the sea change in ideas about cultural democracy and
museum pragmatism that would transpire at the Met during the 1920s. Progressive...

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